Virgin Media Targets P2P Crackdown

Heavy P2P users tend to pick their ISPs based on speed, so this isn't likely to be good news for many of Virgin Media's 20Mbit broadband customers...

The Telegraph is today reporting the Branson-owned group has declared its intention to work with music trade body the BPI to crack down on illegal music downloads taking place on its network.

Going live over the next two months, the BPI will use its teams of technicians to trace the activity on the network and then it will hand the account numbers to Virgin, which has the names and addresses. A three strike warning system is then likely to be put in place with persistent offenders having their account terminated. It is not clear at this stage whether any criminal prosecution would then follow.

"We have been in discussions with rights holders organisations about how a voluntary scheme could work," said a Virgin Media spokesperson, "We are taking this problem seriously and would favour a sensible voluntary solution."

BPI chief executive, Geoff Taylor, said: "This is not the time for ISPs to delay further. Government clearly shares the creative community's frustration at the failure of ISPs to take action."

Of course we have had this argument before and the same problems exist now - cloned modems, unauthorised WiFi sharing, families being pushing for an individual's actions, etc, etc, etc - and existed then. Personally speaking, with many legal P2P sites such as BBC iPlayer also doing the rounds expect this to have a 'Terminal 5' esque warming in period...

In related news, Virgin is attempting to placate user by increasing the upload allowances of 'Broadband L' customers between peak hours (4pm - 9pm) from 325MB to 400MB. If broken, speeds will be cut back to 2.5Mbps not 1Mbps as previously.

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